


we are praying i am the one to save you

by orphan_account



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-01
Updated: 2011-07-01
Packaged: 2017-10-20 22:07:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/217568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s making it sound worse than it was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we are praying i am the one to save you

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Joanna Newsom's "Go Long"

On the day they met, dripping water onto the docks, they’d laughed at one another before they’d said a word. Erik at the idea of someone like him, someone _like_ him, the thoughts fairly forcing their way out of him like the burst of his laughter, and Charles because he’d seen this man, seen all of him, and god help him, he already knew he was ruined.

Everyone had looked at them like they were crazy, holding each other up, shoulders shaking, and Charles had pressed his forehead into Erik’s shoulder, Erik’s fingers in the sodden curls of Charles’ hair. He struggled to let go of Erik, that first time, wanted to fit himself around him, close as the brush of his mind.

That sentiment never really changed.

*

On the road, recruiting, they ate at a succession of terrible diners, drinking bitter coffee and fitting their heads together over plates of eggs and hash. Erik ate like he did most things, mechanical, simply fuelling himself, going through the motions of the day. Charles took him out to a restaurant in New York, later, fine bone china and salmon perfect in every way, and Erik ate in the exact same manner, quick, like someone was going to take it away. A habit impossible to break.

It was a sign of things, surely Charles must have known that. Erik’s shoulders hunched over his food, protective, stubbornly clinging to his past, distrustful even there, even with Charles’ shoe touching his under the table, with the simpering waiter and a rich red wine in their glasses.

Somehow, Charles hadn’t thought much of it at the time.

*

They celebrated Independence Day in their own way, fenced in at Langley on a sweltering day, surrounded by CIA suits—guards, really—who’d relaxed their guards for once, flushed with a little low-buzzing patriotism. Alex was trying, unsuccessfully, to force his powers into a sort of fireworks show, and the air was scorched from the sun and the remnants of the heat of plasma. Raven’s laugh sounded in the courtyard, clear as a bell.

Erik was quiet, but that was no surprise. He sat with Charles on the grass a short distance from the children, his legs sprawled ahead of him, but he was bowstring taut despite the casual posture, wrapped in layers, sweating under the sun. He pulled from a bottle of beer, crystalized with condensation, and Charles watched the bob of his throat as he swallowed.

“This is not our place,” he said, so low Charles was unsure if he’d heard the words, or merely an echo of the thought.

“What do you mean?” Charles asked. “This facility? America?” Or something different.

Erik didn’t answer him, and Charles forced himself not to reach out, pluck the thought out of his head like low-hanging fruit.

“We’ll have a day like this,” Charles said. One bright and crisp and clear, when they won’t have to hide.

 _No we won’t,_ Erik thought.

*

When Erik decided he wanted Charles—and Charles likely knew before he knew himself—he applied himself with the same determination he did with everything, a focus tight and mean. There was a thread of worry in it, a fear of rejection, perhaps, and Charles never knew why. The thought of rejecting him was ludicrous, rejecting a man Charles had wrapped his arms around before knowing his name, tugged back into air.

Erik was as beautiful as he was deadly, a Kalashnikov, with the same intense, furious rage, unwary of collateral. Charles had always wanted him, would always want him with a slow, curling dread, a child who kept putting his hand on a hot stove as if he’d forgotten what it would be like to burn.

The first kiss was brutal, and Charles didn’t know if he’d expected anything else. Erik’s hand fisted in the back of his hair as if to keep him there, keep him still, Erik’s teeth in his bottom lip. The next morning, Charles had bruises on his hips, livid, and he’d pressed his fingers over them in the shower to feel the pain flare up again.

*

He’s making it sound worse than it was. He’s making it sound horrible. It wasn’t. That’s the problem.

*

There was a night Erik fell asleep far earlier than Charles, where Charles stared at the ceiling and let the rush of Erik’s dreaming brush against him, tendrils of unhappiness crawling across the bed to where he lay. There was a night where Charles finally realised the way things would end.

 _Please god,_ Charles thought, unsure who he was truly speaking to. _Please god, make him_ stay.

Erik slept on, a long line of muscle under the sheets, honed as sharp as a knife.

*

Charles had never believed in god anyway. He should have asked someone else.

*

That last night, always _that last night_ , where Erik had been tight with tension, had taken Charles apart beneath his fingers and his tongue, worked the tension into him until they were both singing with it, holding tightly to one another as if they’d drown.

Perhaps Erik knew what he would become the following day, because he’d been sweet, that night, fingers gentle in a way Charles hadn’t been sure Erik was capable of. That’s not fair, though: Erik never saw it coming. It was Charles who saw the end of things.

They both committed their crimes, and Charles’ was seeing what would come. Seeing what would come, and holding onto Erik anyway, gloriously, brutally selfish, clutching at Erik like he could save him that way.

*

Charles was doomed the moment he saved Erik. His generosity—a word Erik always said with a snarl—his need, something in it was wrong, the way he’d latched onto a drowning man, and pulled him reluctantly to life. But Erik never stopped drowning, and he pulled Charles right down with him.

Lord, he’s the author of his own melodrama. Divining a thread of plot through all the madness, putting it into some sort of order like there was anything but madness in it, anything but madness in jumping ship in the middle of the night to save a man determined to drown. There isn’t any sense in it, not in the way it started, not in the way it ended, not anywhere in between. Just two lunatics laughing at one another when they cheated death.

But he needs a narrative. He needs something to put down, to leave behind, needs order because it’s never stopped tumbling through his head at the worst times, Erik dripping wet and grinning, Erik’s body a long line beneath the sheets, Erik’s tears and Erik’s pain and, well, Magneto. He can’t make it all fit in his head.

Charles has never been a bitter man, but sometimes he wants to be.

*

On the day they met, they clutched at one another, laughter first and everything else later. Charles hadn’t wanted to let go. He remembers that. Remembers his forehead against Erik’s chest, Erik’s fingers in his hair, and he’d thought in that moment, _let it stay this way_.

He didn’t have that sort of power, couldn’t ever have that sort of power, but one thing had come out of it: he never did quite let go.

On the day they met, he saved a drowning man, and so he’s the one to blame.


End file.
